"Mc Vay Media Rocks" - 5 new articles
Campus RadioBeen visiting a few Universities as one of my children gets ready to pick a school. It does bring back some great memories of the college days and of course I spent most of it in the Campus Radio world. I usually end up wandering into the campus station just to see what is going on, or at least ask a few questions. In a recent visit I was rather surprised at the 'policy' for the campus station. First the station was all programmed by the students with some help from the broadcasting faculty and looked like it was pretty well done with an Alt/Indy format and special programs for some minorities and special interest groups. They had a decent FM low power signal that probably covered the campus and the small city fairly well. The station looked to be pretty staffed with people in on a Saturday morning doing shows. The professor giving the tour of the communications department mentioned that you need to sign up early to be a DJ if you want good shifts. So there was a student interest here. When I asked if they stream the station - 'we've been trying to get the 'Board' to approve it, but they are scared.' What??? It's OK for the campus and the city to hear it, but not elsewhere? I would think it might be a recruiting tool - you can catch a little of the campus life by listening. Catch some of the 'music vibe' of the school. As important as music is to most 18-24 year olds it's probably worth more than the condition of the pool table in the rec-room. Then as we toured the Union and the eating area they had some music playing and it was obviously a radio station. I thought it might be the Campus station. It wasn't - they had on a Sirius - Mix modern hot AC channel. I'm sure the campus really rocks out when they play Huey Lewis and the News. Too bad the school didn't support the station. This school was pretty into their broadcasting department with a school cable TV channel coming on soon, a full weather department geared at teaching TV meteorology, complete with a Doppler radar. We do need to work more with our local colleges and their radio programs. The air staff and the PDs should be stopping by to host a class, invite them to the station and try to help the faculty with any materials they might need. Not only do we need more people in our talent pools, but we also need to keep radio relevant on the campus scene. In this case we can do something so reach out and drop you local broadcasting faculty an email - and help the future.  At Work ListeningIt's still a BIG key to building P1s, long TSL and big shares in valuable demos, but there are new rules. In the 90s At Work listening really took center stage, first with AC stations and then to Classic Rock for the most part. We ran special at work contests, dropped by with pizza for lunch, called the offices with 'secret contests' to build listening, tried building at work databases, and ran endless 'at work network' imaging to try and build this audience. Most of these programs had some success in the 90s and we could see big At Work listening shares for the stations that followed the programs. Over the last 10 years it's still important, but a lot has changed:
Here are some new and familiar workplace listening ideas that might help:
It will be harder to track at work listening as PPM becomes currency. You can't tell if a meter is at work, in the car or just roaming around the market. You can only measure if the meter is at home or away from home. In the diaries the listener had the option to note if the listening was at work but not in the PPM world. There are also issues with PPM tracking on-line listening with getting the encoded signal in the stream and also having the levels up enough to register with the meter. And there are also issues with the stream being different programming with Arbitron since we often replace the national voices in the spot breaks on the stream. Still, at work listening is very important and if you don't focus on it with a well thought out plan you will see more and more new media invade this great source of TSL and P1 audience.  Ratings, Research and The SampleWhenever you look at any research project from an on-line music test, a few questions to your database, a full perceptual or the research we see the most of - The Ratings the data is ONLY AS GOOD AS THE SAMPLE. It doesn't matter how well crafted your questions are or how you collect the data (from a People Meter or in a Diary) it's always about the confidence you have in the data and that confidence comes from the sample panel. In the numbers world of statistics and probability, which is the core of any research in any field, the reliability and confidence in any study is measured by standard deviation.  If your sample is accurate to only 1 standard deviation (the lowest measure) your trait (listening habits) will fall in the dark blue center covering that 68% of the population. If you have enough sample to achieve 2 standard deviations you will reach all but the last 4% of the population. This is a very simple explanation, but at least you should get the picture on how we can use survey research to tell us what is happening with the audience. If you imagine the whole population under that Normal Curve above you can visualize that the more people you talk to in that curve the more likely you are to gather information on the variables in the audience's traits. The fewer you talk to the less likely you are see the variance in the traits. The principle here dates back to the 1890s and has a whole set of complex formulas to break it out in detail and prove the theory's math. Obviously the better distributed the sample is the better the reliability of the data. But, when do we get to a point where the data becomes useless. A point where we really have no vision or perspective from the data we have collected. I bring this all up because we are at a point with a lot of our ratings services and research where the costs (profit) of keeping people in a panel has driven down the sample sizes. The most obvious world is the PPM measurement. The claim from Arbitron and BBM (in Canada) is that since we have a respondent in the sample for 18 months instead of 1 week and that we accurately get their data from the meter that we can live with a lot less sample. Arbitron introduced this rationale as 'Days of Measurement' claiming that since a meter panel had the same sample size week after week that the data would be more reliable than a diary panel which is only in the sample for a week. Over a month 600 meters would yield 16,800 days of measurement (# of meters *7 *4). If you had a total sample of 600 diaries in the same month you only get 4,200 days of measurement (600/4 weeks * 28). So now you can live with fewer number of people - since they report more data. But is the data reliable - does it reach 2 standard deviations or even 1? The reality is that it doesn't. No matter how you slice it the basic math of standard deviation is that fewer people in the sample means less reliability, no matter how much data you get from them or how long you get it. Sample sizes in Arbitron and BBM are also suffering from low response rates in both diary and PPM samples in both Men and Women 18-34 and in many markets 35-44s are also lacking. You can blame it on too much going on with 18-34s to bother, cell phone only households in those demos that cannot be called on auto dial systems in both countries, or the most likely cause - the cost of sampling. To solve the problem we have another math moment where the age cells that are not responding are simply weighted up. Their meters or diaries are now worth more in the calculation of the results. You only hit 60% of the goal in 18-34 Men - no problem just take that bit of data and multiply it by 140% and bingo you have a balanced sample - print the number. Weighting works when you have a few minor adjustments to make or want to see the data from a special perspective. But for ratings we are trying to see the data from the whole perspective. We also don't have just minor adjustments - in many market reports it's not uncommon to see weighting in the individual cells exceed 175% mark ups. Now you lower the sample in PPM claiming that you have more days of measurement (data) and the weighting only gets worse. There are meter panels out there where we only have 17 18-24 Men in the sample. Markets where there used to be 2,000 diaries contributing to a 12 week report that now only have 600 meters. Even though it may cost more for the meter vs. the paper diary and it may cost more to get people to carry it for 18 months you still need enough sample to at least achieve more than just 1 standard deviation. The reality is that the people meter and the loss of diary sample over the years has placed our measurement systems over the edge here. We can't just keep cooking the math to make it look OK. I know this has been a bit long and probably boring, but it's a core issue to how we understand our audiences and markets. And also how we sell our media. The Media Ratings Council has been very slot in accrediting any of the PPM ratings data. While we have not learned why no doubt the sample sizes and confidence levels are at the core of their concerns with this data.  Taking Music RisksAs the role of Music Radio changes from a dominate taste maker for music (old and new) to a world where there are many other players in the game we are faced with new challenges to stay in the game. At the core of radio's music model is the need to hit as many people under the signal as possible. Our first mission is to build as big of a cumulative audience as possible and then try to find some way to hold them as long as we can. It used to be much easier when the only options where the other stations in the market or maybe someones cassette collection in the car or Walkman. Obviously now the options are nearly infinite and growing every day. With the customizable media the audience can really build their own stations. They catch new music on MySpace, You Tube, and through blogs or websites. Yet we still pretty much hang on to the old rules, strategies, and tactics when it comes to programming our music as we did in the old days of broadcast domination. Tight is right. You're never hurt by what you don't play. Sort the test to 90% familiar, 80% acceptance, and play those powers as much as possible. So what if you only play 200 songs? If they are the right 200 songs. We've also gotten pretty tight when it comes to breaking or adding new music. It's one of the biggest complaints we get from the audience on the street and on-line, but we still play a game of wait and see with the charts. Our tightness and reluctance to take any chances or risks over the years is adding up. If you go back to the days when radio built it's huge influence in music (the 60s and 70s) you see a lot more boldness in adding songs and playlist size. Can you find a CHR station today that actually plays 40 current songs? Probably not - seems like most are around 25 or 30. In Rock we spent the 70s often adding 2-3 songs from an LP when it hit - not just 1 song. Rock used to have 800-1000 songs in the old card rotation system and the freedom to really take requests as well the jocks throwing in a personal pick here and there - now you probably average 500 songs or less. It's lead the audience to start discovering music in many different places. Just take a look at the Big Champagne download charts and you'll see music that radio has only touched lightly pretty high on the charts. In fact Led Zeppelin's tour a while back built 2 song lists for the shows. One came from rock radio plays and the other from Big Champagne downloads. Reports are that they were quite a bit different with Plant and Page using the Big Champagne list with good results. We are going to have to find a new way to balance our need for that huge cume that fuels the core of our business model with the endless variety of new opportunities the audience has to explore music and hear more than we offer on our playlists. The key may be taking a few risks and working to make them pay off as big as possible. Letting down our guard here and there to open the door more to lead the audience instead of just following them. It's not all science - there has to be an equal balance of risk and art. If you would like to learn more about Big Champagne catch this article in Wired. You can also see condensed versions of the Big Champagne charts in All Access under charts.  Killing The ClutterWhen you stand back and break down the content of so much of radio's non music areas you can see the big blocks of clutter we so often have in our breaks. The information segments are filled with it. Look at the extra words we often see in weather, the long winded descriptions around traffic reports, the waste in our music sells, or all the extra words in any news story. It's not that we need to come up with some kind of text message code here to tighten it up, but do we really need all the details we usually include to get the message across? Also look at where we put content in breaks. How many times do we hear a backsell where the jock has 'forced' some trivial music info into it, then rolls a liner for a bar night filled with extra plugs and finally we get to a great call from the audience? All the extra dancing before we hit the real 'punch line-caller' that was the real entertainment in the break. Sometimes it sounds like we are talking just to hear our voices in the headphones. Hyping it up and giving that extra sell is also a test on the audience's patience and time. Make that liner extra special, sell those concert tickets for the promoter - our name is on that show, last week's wet t-shirt contest at Woody's was down give it the extra sell. We've all heard it and so has the audience. Or we fall victim to the 'formatics' of the break. A contest is set up in the backsell and then we go to the phones while the spots run. After 5 minutes of spots we finally have the pay off and a caller on the phone with an entertaining bit - is there anyone left that's really paying attention? Then there is the billboard or tease. Just because you have AC/DC on the way is that enough motivation to stay. We often cite the great Casey Kasem set ups as examples, but even those don't often carry the weight to get the audience to hang in there anymore - there are just too many other options at the press of a button. The more we look at the tune out by studying the audience's reaction with the People Meters the more we see that they don't have much patience when the music stops. They know the spots are coming and your break is really more like a time bomb waiting to go off in just a few seconds with them. You have to get the MEAT or most entertaining part of the break out in front and try to hold them as long as you can. The longer you hold them the more likely they are to pass that urge to tune out. Look at it much like a comedian who opens his slot with a joke about an Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman - you know the joke is going to wander around a bit till you finally get to that entertaining/funny punch line. In the comedy club you can't flip the switch and jump to another comedian so you hang in there. Also look at the practice we often see to build the break and finish with a big laugh or moment as we wrap it up. Leave them laughing. Run off the stage with the audience demanding more - a standing ovation. Again that works on a stage where the audience has to get up to find the exit. In our world - punch - you're gone. We've seen a number of stories that radio programmers are pushing the talent to 'shut up.' Even the most recognized terrestrial radio jock, Ryan Seacrest, is under the gun to keep it quick according to his comments on The Kevin and Bean Show. We all know the reality is that just being a jukebox won't do anything for radio to survive an a new media sea of jukebox options. We need the personality, entertaining elements and the information to build the unique product that broadcast radio is. Now that we can see what the audience does with the meter we also see that we have to be more focused. If we can learn to value their time and patience a lot more we can still deliver content that holds and entertains the audience. Sticking to this basic tenant of radio will turn out to be the real magic of our medium. Perhaps a few lessons from SNL's MacGruber will illustrate it in an entertaining way.  More Recent Articles |
